SHARE

School approved for 4-year degrees

Colorado Mountain College will next seek green light from state board

Colorado Mountain College will be seeking approval from its accrediting body after Gov. Bill Ritter signed a bill Thursday letting the school offer up to five bachelor’s degrees.

Ritter signed the measure at CMC’s Breckenridge campus in a ceremony whose participants included state Sen. Dan Gibbs and state Rep. Christine Scanlan, two Summit County lawmakers who sponsored the bill.

He also signed several other bills the two sponsored, including one setting minimum Interstate 70 speed limits that are 25 mph less than the maximum on the same stretches of highway, and a second to study possibly adding reversible “zipper” lanes on I-70 to relieve congestion in the high country.

The CMC measure had passed by overwhelming votes in the state Senate and House.

The college next will seek accreditation from the Higher Learning Commission and also will need approval from the Colorado Commission on Higher Education for individual degrees.

The college has 15 teams of administrators and faculty working to meet the requirements for those approvals.

CMC President Stan Jensen said in a news release that the college hopes to be able to offer some degree programs by the fall of 2011, and possibly even offer several upper-level classes this fall.

Some of the bachelor’s degrees it is looking into offering are in business, teacher education and environmental science.